Absolutes
by Sophia Bee
Summary: Post S3, Nikita is on the run, Michael and the rest of the gang have been labeled 'persons of interest'. Nikita/Michael
1. Chapter 1

Michael has always been too comfortable in the place where black and white blend together until you don't know which is which. He's always known that things must be done for the end goal. He lives in the gray areas. It's what made him a good soldier for Percy, for Division.

The rain has been dripping for days now, running down the cracked panes of the grimy warehouse windows, muffling the sounds from the street below, making the entire world feel damp and gray. Michael shivers a little but doesn't move from the chair he's perched on, gazing out at the lights of the city but seeing none of it.

"Michael."

Alex crouches next to him, her hair pulled back, a thick wool hat on her head. She's wearing two sweaters, fingerless gloves, and he can still see the goosebumps on her exposed skin. Her breath fogs up and she's cradling a mug in her hands. It steams into the cold air. She looks at him, dark circles ringing her eyes, saying nothing, just watching, and he sees that has the same worried look that everyone else has around him. They watch him and wait, looking for the cracks to start to show, waiting for the grief to come pouring through. Her skin is pale, almost translucent and he wonders when she slept last.

"I thought this might warm you up."

She's talking about the tea in her hand, and he can smell peppermint in the air. It's a gift, an attempt to bridge to wherever he goes when he sits and stares out the window, trying to make sure everything is okay. Nothing is okay, but he'll never tell her that. He is always the soldier. Always the professional.

"I'm not cold."

He doesn't really mean to be so short with Alex. He sees a brief look of hurt cross her face that she quickly pushes down, replacing it with a blank look that says she doesn't care. She's so much like Nikita with that vulnerability that can't be destroyed, that ability to feel that won't die no matter what they do to kill it. He doesn't mean to hurt her.

He can tell Alex wants to say something but doesn't. She wants to reach a hand out and touch his shoulder to remind him that he's not alone, but her hands stay wrapped around the mug. Because she knows that he'll flinch and push her hand away. Michael doesn't do vulnerable. At least not until Nikita, and now that she's gone, so is everything she made him into.

Everyone wants to say something but doesn't. Birkhoff wants to ask how he's doing. Ryan wants to tell him it'll be okay. Alex wants to tell him that Nikita will be back, that she loves him, that she did what she had to do. They all want to heal the wounds they think he has. He needs everyone to move past this. To move past her.

Michael lives in the gray areas.

He dreams of emptying his gun into her, watching her body jolt with every shot, of making her pay, yet he can't breathe the moment he pictures her face, his fingers can still feel her skin under them. He lives with the dichotomy of loving someone and hating them at the same time. Those are the gray areas.

Nikita doesn't have gray areas.

She made him believe in black and white. That there are some absolutes in this world, and the one he could count on was the fact that she loved him. Then she walked away.

They've been in this warehouse for two months now, keeping a low profile, altering their appearances every time they leave. They are "persons of interest", their faces splashed all over the news, newfound notoriety a parting gift from Amanda. Maybe the world will forget the faces that might have helped kill the president. Maybe not. They can't take the risk.

Alex looks tired, and he hears her calling out Sean's name those rare times she sleeps. She says she's okay but Michael sees her jump at the shadows. He sees the way her hands shake.

Ryan has started a board with all the information they know about what Amanda's next move could be. They don't have the wall of monitors that Division had so he's relied on corkboards they've found in the dumpsters, covered them with push pins and papers, strings connecting what they know about The Group. He spends all day staring at it, moving things around, trying to figure his way out of this mess they've been placed in, muttering to himself, biting at his fingers. Michael isn't sure he sleeps.

Burkoff hunches over a computer that Michael doesn't ever ask how he got. He and Alex showed up one morning with it in tow, Birkhoff declaring that it would have to do. He spends all night working on something, maybe the resurrection of Shadownet, maybe something else. There's a ratty wool scarf wrapped around his neck and he's stopped complaining about the cold. Sometimes in the middle of the night he'll tell Michael that he misses her. Misses being called 'nerd'. Misses the old days.

Sonya looks afraid. She's never been in the field before now, not like this, and Michael can tell that Birkhoff spends a lot of time comforting her. She still puts on a brave face.

Michael keeps busy, helping Ryan, talking tactics, looking at what Burkoff comes up with. He goes with Alex to score provisions. He tells everyone that it's just a matter of time before this is done, before Amanda slips up and they catch up with her. The soldier. The professional. He says all the right things but no matter what, their eyes follow him, wait for him to break. The rest of the time he sits, staring through the grime covered windows, watching the water drip down the walls, trying to keep her out of his head.

They found the warehouse pretty quickly, chasing out the rodents and stealing electricity from a nearby powerline. Their new base of operations, a far cry from the sophistication of Division's underground bunker that had been enveloped in flames. It was in a part of town that no one cared about except those who had something to hide, near the river that flowed deep and dark, full of industrial waste dumped decades ago, before people knew that there were consequences to treating the environment like it was there for you to destroy.

It was the river that took her ring.

Michael stood on its edge, staring at the rusting hulk of a truck that had been left in its waters. Her ring was in his hand, cutting into his palm, and he wished he could ask her why. Why did she walk away when all anyone wanted to do was help her. He will never ask her because he knows why. He knows Nikita better than he knows himself. He always has.

Nikita lives in a world of black and white.

She left because she wanted to keep them safe. Because as long as she was with them, they would all be in danger. She made the deepest cut because it was what she thought she had to do. He knows this so there's nothing left to ask. She knew there would be pain with the cut. She knew there would be blood. She did it anyway. Nikita. He knew she did it because she cares and she did it because she's selfish, because she can see only one way. If she leaves, they are safe. She was wrong.

Nikita the Martyr, never wrong. Always working for what she thinks is right.

Michael stood at the edge of the river that day, her voice in his head, telling him she loved him, telling him she would marry him and stay with him forever. Telling him they could have a life, like the life he lost all those years ago when his wife and daughter were blown to bits in front of him. Michael closed his eyes and his jaw clenched because he could almost feel her and that was what he wanted more than anything. To feel her again. Then he opened them and tried to let her go again. They would never be what he had thought. With a swift motion he threw her ring into the murky waters, watched it glint as it sunk into the darkness. He stood there until it was dark, staring, then he turned and walked back to the warehouse. Maybe this time he would finally be rid of her ghost, but he knew she would be back in his dreams that night.

During the day they don't move much, keeping quiet so no one will hear them. At night they keep the lights off, not wanting to attract attention. Everything is veiled in gray, lacking color, and sometimes it feels like they might suffocate from the sheer dreariness of it all.

"Michael."

He looks up at the sound of his name and sees that Alex has gone and the mug is sitting on the ground next to the chair, cold and untouched. He doesn't move, doesn't turn around. Michael doesn't want anyone to disturb his revery.

"MICHAEL."

It's Birkhoff. He's peering around the screen and looking at Michael with his eyes wide. Michael almost knows what he's going to say before it comes out of his mouth.

"She's surfaced."

Nikita.

Alex rushes over to the computer and leans over Birkhoff's shoulder, staring at the screen. Michael sees her lips moving as she reads whatever Birkhoff has found. He stands up from his chair, his muscles sore from remaining in one position for so long. He stands, not moving, just watching. Ryan moves from his board and stands next to Alex and Birkhoff.

"Holy shit." Ryan mutters.

Michael finally decides to walk over to the computer. Nikita is a highly trained operative that could take out any military trained special forces personnel. She can survive on nothing for extended periods of time. She's skilled at not being found, and she's not careless or sloppy. If she's surfaced it means one of two things. Either she wants to be found, or…

Michael feels his breath hitch and he stumbles a little as he walks towards the monitor. No one is looking at him.

She wants to be found or she's…

He can almost feel her again, the way she holds herself close to him but never close enough to touch, the way his skin vibrates when she's near him. It's always been that way with her, from the moment they brought her kicking and screaming into Division, not much more than a wild animal, dirty and strung out on the drugs they had given her. He had always been strangely tuned into her.

She wants to be found or she's…

...dead.

Nikita.

Her name is on his lips and everything feels sharp and jagged. Finally he finds the words.

"Is she…"

Alex looks up and he must be entirely ripped open because a look of shock passes over her face, and she knows what he's been thinking because the next thing out of her mouth leaves Michael almost shaking, and he hadn't realized how much tension he'd been holding as it rushed out of him, and it takes everything in him, every last bit of strength to remain standing, to act like the very idea of losing Nikita wouldn't destroy him. He might live in the gray areas but his love for her was entirely black and white. The only absolute Michael would ever know in his life.

"No," Alex gasps. "No, she's not dead. Not yet. But she needs our help."

TBC 


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes she can feel him.

The wind whips through in gusts, almost toppling her over and the icy snow stinging her cheek. Nikita holds her gun out steady, her hand wanting to tremble but it won't. She's trained to hold up under pressure, and this might be the most pressure she's ever faced. Her thighs are aching from holding her stance for so long but she ignores the burning pain. The only thing in her head is him.

_The curve of his shoulder as she lays her cheek on it._

Her feet are steady on the beam of steel as she balances high above the city and for a moment she wonders why she didn't decide to do this in the spring. A slight smile flickers across her face in a strange moment of comic relief. A little sunshine would make her precarious perch less slippery. Maybe she could have gotten a tan while she was being hunted and killed.

It's hard to see the men below in the dark. Far off in the distance she can hear the sound of a helicopter approaching. She expected this. It would be hard to get snipers close to her as she scaled up the side of the hulking skeleton that would someday become a looming skyscraper, full of businesses and people, bustling around, trapped like ants, just like the Division. What she's learned is that everyone is trapped. Even the almighty warrior for the righteous, Nikita Mears. She had become trapped by her crusade. Trapped by her need for revenge. Right now her trap is a little less symbolic. She's trapped on this huge frame of a building that rises up from the ground and she's not sure how she's going to get down.

Nikita's mind wanders. She knows it shouldn't years of training have taught her to stay sharp and focused, to push everything aside for the mission. But as she stands in the cold waiting for the end to finally be here, to finally have some peace, she can't stop picturing him. Michael. Can't stop feeling him, and she shuts her eyes tightly, feels her body waver a little and she remembers...

_The column of his neck under her lips._

Her eyes jerk open as she starts to tip then steadies herself. The wind gusts again and she thinks it would be easy to topple her over. After all, three months off the grid doesn't leave a girl anything but paper thin. They days of Nikita the perfect combination of lethal and beauty were gone. Her skin is dry, her lips cracked, her hands covered in callouses. She'd survived in the forests of Canada, sometimes finding a small town that locked up their only store with a padlock on the back door and hadn't gotten around to installing surveillance cameras. Most of the time it was whatever she could forage; berries, bark, small animals she managed to trap. She can count her ribs and her body aches from the cold. She had also been worn down to her strongest parts. It had left her with only the the warrior who always survived. She was steel, like the girder she balanced on.

_The way he kissed her, like she was the air he needed to breathe._

She can't stop the memories. They start to crowd in on her and she wonders if it won't be a bullet that ends this but her own surrender to what she really wants. Will she let herself drift downward off her perch and into her memories, pretending she's falling into his embrace and not towards the cold, hard ground.

The plan had been easy. After months of being out in the cold, it was time to fight back, to clear her name. Break into the FBI, see what they had on her, but somehow Amanda had gotten ahead of her, somehow she knew. Nikita didn't know how.

Maybe it was the drug house she'd robbed in Detroit, jamming a gun into the dealer's face as she shoveled his stash into her bag. It would be the commodity she needed to trade in order to move under the radar. Junkies didn't ask who you were if you gave them what they wanted. But maybe someone had recognized her voice underneath the Porky Pig mask, reported her. It wasn't like the whole world didn't know what Nikita Mears sounded like at this point, her image splashed across screens, old footage played of her, leaked from Amanda. She counted on certain people out there simply not to care because they were too busy looking for their next high.

Maybe someone saw her as she skulked along the side of the highway in the darkest hours of early morning, looking for a ride who wouldn't ask too many questions and was looking for another hit to keep them going. Maybe they'd seen the slender woman in the black hoodie with her arms wrapped around her as she shivered and glanced at her face and realized that they knew who she was.

Maybe…

She'll never know. What she does know is there was a welcoming party at the fed building in New York, something she hadn't expected, and she knew it was Amanda and that was when Nikita decided to run. In the old days she might have stayed and fought, her glock heavy and familiar in her hand, Michael covering her…

_Michael._

The way he whispered her name, ripped from somewhere deep inside, full of desperation. Full of love. 

Her hair is whipped by the wind again and the strands tickle her face. It is short and unevenly shorn. She cut it the day she decided to return to the grid, a clumsy attempt disguise herself from the world, leaving the clippings scattered across the snow like some sort of Native American sacrifice. Nikita can feel her lips starting to go numb but she doesn't mind the cold. Weeks of freezing temperature with only her lean-to to keep her sheltered have made her immune to the cold.

She had gone the first place she thought would be safe when she saw the cars with the dark windows outside the building, when her keen eye had seen snipers crouched on the roofs of the buildings, guns pointed towards the entrance. She had run, scaling over the fence and dropping down to the snow-covered ground of the construction site, a shadow scurrying back into the darkness, but someone had seen her, a quick movement out of the corner of their eye and she heard her name called out loud in alarm.

Nikita. Killer.

She had come full-circle. She was nothing but a killer to the world, just like when she'd sat on death row. Only a killer. Nothing else. Not worth anything else. In her darkest moments she was worth nothing, even to herself and especially to him.

The construction site was deserted, as were most things at 2 am on a Tuesday morning. She could hear the shouts and pounding feet behind her, see the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles reflecting up the walls of the buildings. Nikita had taken her climbing rope out of her backpack and started to scale up the huge steel girders, hoping to get away. She didn't realize that there would be not out this time.

This is the end, perched hundreds of feet above the frozen ground with only the wind as her companion, waiting for what feels like hours, but might be only seconds, for the clock to tick to the next second, the next minute that will be the end. Waiting for the whiz of a bullet that will smack into her skull and penetrate her brain, and her body will jerk and fall, crashing down and end up lying broken in the yard below. Waiting for it to be over.

She doesn't care.

"I am done, my love,"

Her voice is a whisper that no one will hear, but she speaks to him as if he were standing in front of her. The love of her life. The man who saved her. Michael.

"I'm so sorry."

Sometimes she can feel him.

At night she would jerk awake in the pitch blackness of the forest, only the trees rustling above her, his name on her lips and those were the moments when she would curl herself into a ball and remember how he felt up against her back, how his warm skin felt against hers, how his breathing would be deep and even, his arm heavy across her waist, how safe she felt, and that's when she let the tears flow. She missed him. She hasn't stop missing him since the moment she walked away.

At least he was safe.

She had to do it. There was no question. As long as she was near him, he would be unsafe. It was the story of her life on repeat. She destroyed the people around her, over and over again. But they never learned. They never walked away. Burkhoff. Alex. Ryan. Michael. They were full of stupid devotion, unwilling to give her the end she deserved, so she took that decision from them. She walked away, and in her head she heard the last person she expected, whispering the truth in her ear.

_NIkita. The martyr._

You always know what's best for everyone else. You never let them decide. You think you're the hero. You're selfish. 

Amanda.

It's the truth. Strangely it's Amanda who always seems to know her best. Michael is blinded by his love, by the person she could be. Birkhoff suffers from hero worship. Alex is devoted. But Amanda has always seen who Nikita is. Underneath the heroics, underneath the conviction, underneath the love, she is always right.

It's only a matter of time.

Who knew this would be the end.

The sound of the helicopter grows louder and Nikita thinks she should just throw down her gun, give up. It's clear what will happen now. They will shoot her. She will die. She slowly puts her arms out in a gesture of surrender at the police helicopter comes closer, turning her face up to the light that is shining down like the light of redemption, and she knows that this is finally coming to an end. She takes in a deep breath, feeling the cold air sting her lungs, closes her eyes and waits….

...waits…

Then in the silence that has surrounded her she hears something that takes her breath away, and for a moment she thinks it's an audio hallucination, conjured up from the deepest part of her brain, a cry from her soul that wants to live.

"NIKITA!"

The voice drifts over the noise of the helicopter and her eyes fly open because this isn't the voice of some faceless police sergeant on a loudspeaker. It's..it's…

"NIKITA!"

Alex.

Her eyes fly open to see that the helicopter has lowered a ladder and on the end is Alex and her hand is reaching out, grasping for Nikita, and for a moment she hesitates, because she walked away and this makes things more complicated, and it's best for everyone if she just steps off the girder and into the darkness, leaving them to mourn her but leaving them safe.

Nikita squints up into the blinding light, still unable to believe that this is real, that it isn't something conjured up by her brain to make dying a little easier, and and as she looks up at Alex who is begging her with her eyes, she sees his face looking down at her.

Michael.

She's coming home.

She reaches up, reaches to him, reaches up for forgiveness and reconciliation. Alex stretches down and grabs her hand, and the moment they connect, she feels cold on her cheek but this time it's not snow but tears.

Nikita will live.

TBC


End file.
